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Pay-Per-Click (PPC) The Fast-Track to Using Google Adwords Remember back when Al Gore allegedly said he "invented the Internet?" Well, he didn't, it was Google. Alright, I'm kidding, but sometimes it does appear that way. Google has consistently launched one killer application after another, and they weren't playing around when they entered into the pay-per-click arena with their "Adwords" program. Adwords is one of the largest online advertising networks, reaching more than 80% of all Internet users. So how does it work? You choose keywords/phrases that are related to your products/services, write the text ads that will be shown when someone performs a search for your keywords, set a daily budget and the cost you want to pay every time someone clicks on your ad (C.P.C), and you're ready to run. There is no activation fee and no minimum monthly spend amount. Ads are called "sponsored links", and appear along with search results on Google, as well as other affiliated search engines and "content sites" in the Google Network. This type of keyword based advertising will help you to reach a highly targeted audience quickly and easily. Not only can you run text ads, but also image/animated ads - even video. If you're a beginner at pay-per-click marketing, I would suggest you start out with text ads. You'll need to "learn to walk" before you run. So what does a text ad look like? It consists of a 25 character headline, a description that is 2 lines of no more than 35 characters, and what's called a "display url". This url can reflect any domain you like because when it is clicked upon, the browser will take them to your "destination url". This is set up behind the scenes and does not appear in the ad itself. A 3 line text ad might sound like a lot of room, but it's not. You've got a small area to make a huge impact on the searcher and make them want to click. Don't underestimate the power of a well written ad. If you don't know a lot about how to write "good copy", I suggest you study up. You'll want to include what's referred to as a "call to action" somewhere in the description. You'll also want to include your keywords if possible in your title and ad copy so they will appear in a bold font when your ad is displayed. For help see: http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/18779.html You also need to send them to the page that's most relevant to your ad copy. This page is called a "landing page", and you'll want to make sure it converts. A conversion happens when the visitor performs the action you intended. For example, signs up for your newsletter, buys your product, etc. With Adwords conversion tracking you'll be given a snippet of code to paste on your web page wherever any conversion takes place. For example, your thank you page. This allows you to track how well your pages are converting. You can also use Google Analytics. For more see: http://www.google.com/analytics/ Now that landing page load time is being factored into "quality score", you'll also want to pay attention to your page's load time. Quicker is better. For more information on this topic see: Now, let's talk about keywords. The biggest mistake most people make is choosing single keywords. You're much better off with two and three word combinations. For example if you sell dog food, instead of targeting a generic term like "dogs", you'd be better off selecting "dog food". Remember, these keywords will be responsible for triggering your ads to appear, so do your homework and choose wisely. Targeting the wrong keywords can be a very expensive lesson. For help in choosing keywords use Google's tool located at: When setting up your keywords, you'll also need to choose what's called a "match type". Here are your options: 1) Broad Match: The default setting. Searchers can enter your keywords in any order and your ads appear. Not the best option for targeted traffic. 2) Phrase Match: Your keywords must appear in the exact order for your ads to appear. This is more targeted than Broad Match. 3) Exact Match: This is the most targeted option. The searcher must type in your key-phrase exactly for your ads to appear. 4) Negative Match: You choose words you don't want your ads to appear for when searched upon. For example, typing in the word "-free" would stop your ads from appearing if someone typed that word before your key-phrase. So who decides which ads will appear at the top? This is called "ad rank". Ads with the highest ad rank will appear at the top. Here's the formula, at least at this time as it's always open to change. Ad Rank = C.P.C. (cost per click) X Quality Score To understand this formula you'll need to know what factors go into "quality score". Quality Score is determined by : 1) How relevant the keywords and ad copy are to the search query. 2) "The historical Click-through rate of the ad, and of the matched keyword on Google". 3) It also includes your account history, which looks at the click through rate of your keywords and ads. 4) Landing page load time. And, according to Google, "other relevant factors". One tip to improve your ad rank is to raise your cost per click, and improve your ad copy and keywords in order to up your quality score. Ad ranking is determined slightly differently for the search network compared to the content network. For the content network it looks like this: Ad Rank = Content Bid X Quality Score What is the difference between the Content Network and Search Network? Good question. I thought you'd never ask. This is another option you'll have to decide upon when setting up your account. If you choose "search sites", your ads are displayed on search results pages only. Google's search network consists of: AOL, Netscape, Earthlink, Compuserve, AT&T, Worldnet, Ask.com, Shopping.com, Froogle and of course Google itself. If you choose for your ads to appear in the "content network", this includes community websites, online publications and other information based sites that choose to display Adwords ads. Partners in the content network include sites such as: Google's Gmail, About, Lycos, NYTimes.com, Infospace, Reed Business, HowStuffWorks, Business.com, Food Network, HGTV, MarthaStewart.com and many other content based websites. Ads are targeted to the content of the individual pages. You'll also have some control over where your ads appear and don't appear with what's called "placement targeting". You can actually pick and choose from websites you'd like your ads to appear on, or not to appear on. You can opt in to both search and content networks, or just one. At this point you're probably thinking this is a lot to learn. And you're right - it is, but there are plenty of online resources to help you such as: Google is a powerful Internet giant and makes for a mighty advertising partner. Make sure you harness some of that muscle, and you too can become an Internet force to be reckoned with. About The Author: Article by Merle. "The Tricks to Paying for Clicks". Learn everything you need to know about pay-per-click search engines at: PayPerClickResearch.com. Source: SiteProNews * August 15, 2008 * Issue #1129
Smart Search Engine Marketing - Some Guidelines Search Engine Marketing, whether it's paid or organic, is a science. While it is true that you can put together an ad on Google or Yahoo!, pick a few keywords that describe your business, then bid on them and be up and running with a Pay Per Click campaign in a few minutes, the actual process requires considerably more thought. Here are a few key points to consider: What is the goal of your ad? If you are an e-commerce merchant selling mainline products, you probably want to generate a sale. If you are operating a decorating business, your goal more likely is to generate a lead for follow-up. That goal will shape how you structure your campaign. What kind of landing page do you want the user to click through to? Is it a specific product page with all the information necessary to complete the order or do you want your customer to land on your home page in order to get more information about your company? You may want your ad to be product specific or have a more general message. Is there a special "deal" that you can offer in your ad? Phrases like "free shipping", "save 10% now" or "sale ends tomorrow" create a sense of immediacy that can increase the likelihood someone will click on your ad. You don't have to have the top ad listing in order to be successful. While being #1 likely will bring you more clicks, you don't want to overpay for them. Typically, as long as your ad appears in the first five positions, and has a compelling offer, you will get your share of clicks. The keywords you select for your ad are critical. In fact, the difference between a cost-effective campaign and one that just costs you money often are the keywords you select. Try to avoid buying general terms, unless your site has a very, very broad selection of product. The keyword "cars" might bring anyone who is looking for anything having to do with a car - that probably doesn't do you much good if you are selling radiator hoses. Stick to words and phrases that relate as specifically as possible to what you are selling. A good rule of thumb is that the more general a keyword is, the more expensive it is. The page customers land on when they click on your ad should contain similar words to those used in the ad. Reinforcing the ad message is important for two reasons: first, it tells people they are "at the right place" and second it will help your Quality Score on Google and Quality Index on Yahoo!. Google in particular attaches great importance to the relevance of your landing page and you may be able to secure a higher ad position with a lower bid than other advertisers. Monitor your campaign regularly. This is particularly important at the outset when you are establishing what works and what doesn't. Pay per click advertising isn't day trading - you don't have to be glued to the monitor but you don't want hours to go by without seeing if your clicks are converting into your desired result of sales or leads. A large search agency might suggest that you need 1,000 or more clicks to determine if your campaign is working. As a start-up or small business, you (or your agency) should be able to draw conclusion with far less clicks than that. About the Author: Richard Teich is the owner of eMarketSmart.com, a Search Engine Marketing Agency based in Los Angeles, CA. He has worked with business in different e-commerce verticals, as well as in the health information and business to business sectors. Entireweb Newsletter * August 14, 2008 * Issue #466
How to Create Killer Landing Pages In the field of online marketing, a landing page is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search engine result link. It is sometimes known as a lead capture page and usually displays content that reinforces the message contained in the ad or search snippet. Types of Landing Pages There are two main types of landing page: 1) Reference Landing Page Reference landing pages deliver information relevant to the visitor. This could include text, images, links or other elements not requiring interaction. 2) Transactional Landing Page Transactional landing pages ask visitors to complete a transaction such as clicking on an advertisement, filling out a form or downloading a file with the aim being immediate or eventual conversion of that prospect to a sale. To aid the capturing of new leads, transactional pages generally seek visitor contact details such as a name, email address and/or a telephone number. A visitor taking the desired action on a transactional landing page is known as a conversion. Landing page quality can be measured by the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action (the conversion rate). Since the Return on Investment (ROI) of pay per click (PPC) campaigns is often determined by the conversion rate, advertisers should be constantly testing, tweaking and improving their landing pages. We will discuss testing methods available, such as A/B testing and multivariate testing, in a later lesson. Why Are Landing Pages Important? In PPC and search marketing campaigns, the landing page is usually customized very closely to the advertisement which triggered it. In PPC campaigns, landing pages are vital in order to "close the sale" and encourage visitors to take the action you want them to take. By adding a parameter to the landing page URL (and therefore forming a tracking URL), advertisers can measure the ROI on their PPC ads based on relative clíck-through rates. While enticing ad copy is very important in order to attract clicks, effective landing pages are vital in order to "close the sale" and encourage your visitors to take the action you want them to take. Landing pages often determine whether you make a conversion or not. Using landing pages on your site also means that some visitors won't ever see your home page. First impressions haven't ever been so important, so you need your landing pages to represent your business, product or service in the best possible light. What are the Goals of a Landing Page? Many marketers make the mistake of assuming that a conversion is the main goal of an effective landing page. But attracting and capturing qualified leads is an easier and more important goal. Why? Because you can always "sell" to visitors later. Grabbing their contact details ensures you have captured them at the height of their interest. So the main goals of a landing page are: 1) To Attract Prospects (primary goal) - grab email address and/or phone number 2) To Produce Conversions (secondary goal) Features of an Effective Landing Page: The ingredients for an effective landing page include:
Landing Page Case Study E-Consultancy recently published a case study from Marketing Sherpa about the effects of a landing page redesign on a marketing campaign. The study followed the experiences of a company called Multimedia Tutorial Services who hired a landing page consulting firm to improve the conversion rates of their paid search marketing campaign selling video tutorials for mathematics. The company had originally been directing persons who clicked on their ads to a lead generation form offering a free sample math video tutorial. They had some success with this, but sensed that more tailored landing pages would result in more leads being generated. So the company hired landing page design experts to custom-build pages designed to encourage more consumers to request a free sample and boost the number of leads for the company's call center to approach. The result? The revised landing pages converted 139% more consumers into sales leads than the original landing page. You can see why if you view the pages below: New Landing Page Targeting Algebra New Landing Page Targeting Geometry You can see that the new pages include many of the features of an effective landing page that we described above. More About Calls to Action When it comes to encouraging your visitors to take the action you want them to take, focus on one primary action per screen. Don't stuff too many products onto one screen. Make your call-to-action button clearly visible without having to scroll, don't bury it under pages of information. Consider using tabs or a pop-up box to consolidate information. Taking Prospects by the Hand When visitors are on your landing page, you need to make it easy and painless for them to take the next steps. In a virtual sense, you need to take them by the hand and lead them through the process. How do you do that? Tell visitors why they should purchase from you. According to the Marketing Experiments Journal the "Clarity of your value proposition is the most important factor in determining whether a customer buys from you or not." To evaluate your value proposition, ask yourself the question: Why should I purchase from this site? Tracking and Tweaking is Key With PPC campaigns, you have so much more control than you do with SEO campaigns. Why? Because you have nearly full control over how your listing appears, what keywords trigger it, where on the page it appears, how much you pay per lead and what page your ad links to. Don't waste this knowledge! You need to consistently track results from your campaign, track click-throughs, ad quality, conversions and ROI. If you want your campaign to succeed, you can't have a "set and forget" mentality that (unfortunately) many advertisers have. PPC campaigns require constant tracking and tweaking. Later in this course we discuss ways of testing your landing pages and ads to consistently improve your conversions. About The Author: Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects. Source: SiteProNews * July 28, 2008 * Issue #1121
11 Tips for Pay-Per-Click Success This list details some very important points to keep in mind when creating or managing any pay-per-click campaign. Is this all there is to know about pay-per-click advertising? Absolutely not, but for those new to PPC it should serve as good place to start. Additionally, pay-per-click veterans or at least the moderately-seasoned will want to touch upon these points now and then to brush up on their fundamentals. 1) Do your keyword homework. Use Google's free Keyword Tool or sign up for a WordTracker account to find out which keywords are the most competitive. The more competitive the keyword, the more expensive your clicks will be. While you're finding out which keywords are too expensive you'll come across some that aren't being targeted heavily by advertisers. Take a good look at these - they may be your keys to a successful niche campaign. 2) Don't bunch your ad groups. You should be striving to separate your ad groups by keyword. Whatever your target, separate your keyword lists into closely related groups containing the same target words and write ads geared specifically to those words. Your ads will show up higher in results based on their quality, and search terms show up bold in results - a click-through rate booster. 3) Drive home your selling point. What's your offer? Why are you better than the others? Remember that your ads are going to display with your competitors. The difference between a user clicking your ad and clicking a competitor ad is about 100 pixels on the screen - or a millisecond of time. You need to convince them that you are the one they want. You are better. Grab them. 4) Don't send users to your home page. This is perhaps one of the worst things you can do to your Pay-Per-Click campaign. Internet users are notoriously impatient. Send them to your home page when they were searching for a specific product or service and see how fast they leave. Don't waste your advertising budget - send them to optimized landing pages. 5) Optimize your landing pages. Your landing pages need to drive something home immediately for your users: "you have landed in the right place." They need to know that, yes, this is what they were looking for, here it is, here is why it is better than the rest and here's the easy thing they need to do to get it. In most cases you'll need to create multiple landing pages based on your different ad groups and keywords, but look at it this way - if your users aren't landing at pages geared exactly to their search phrases they'll leave and take your advertising budget with them. 6) Don't lie in your ads. People aren't dumb. If you promise something in your ads you had better well deliver. Otherwise you'll not only waste advertising dollars but damage your brand. Be honest, and focus on points that make you stand out from the competition. Grandiose ad text might bring in clicks, but if it isn't the truth it won't bring in conversions. 7) Your domain name counts. In most cases you can display a domain name that you own as the "display domain" but point the ads to a page on a different domain. Why does this matter? If you own a domain name that contains the keyword text it will show up bold and increase conversions. Enter the optimized domain as the displayed domain, point the ads to your landing pages and you can expect higher CTRs in most cases. 8) Utilize negative keywords. Google has a new Negative Keyword Tool that will allow you to find negative keywords that you should specify for your ads. Negative keywords are those that you don't want your ads to display for. For example, if you're selling "blue widgets" you don't want to display your ads to those users searching for "free blue widgets." If you don't use negative keywords you are missing out on a chance to get more targeted traffic to your landing pages, and this can really hurt your conversion rates. 9) Test, test, and test some more. The greatest thing about internet advertising is the ability it grants you to measure your success. It's easy to create A/B split tests with Pay-Per-Click advertising. Change one word, add a comma, include a value proposition. . .just make sure you only change one thing for each split or you won't know which variable it was that made the difference! You'll find out right away that this is a great way to optimize your click-through rates - just don't forget that clicks aren't everything! 10) Don't focus too heavily on CTRs. Getting tons of clicks isn't always the name of the game. In fact, if you aren't using proper techniques to ensure that you're getting targeted traffic and sending it to well-optimized landing pages you can blow through your advertising budget in no time flat. Remember that the success of any advertisement is getting back more than you put in. It's an investment, not a cost - so do all that you can to better your rate of return! 11) Don't pigeonhole yourself. We all know that Google AdWords is the most popular Pay-Per-Click service out there. Your competitors know it, your users know it - even your grandma might know it. It would be foolish to ignore Google as a venue for advertising, but don't forget that there are other search engines out there who offer similar services. Yahoo!'s new Panama search system is catching on, and Microsoft's adCenter is nothing to sneeze at either. Both companies are currently offering sweet promotional deals to new Pay-Per-Click advertisers to stay competitive so take advantage and diversify! About the Author: Mike Tekula handles SEO, SEM, usability and standards-compliance for NewSunGraphics, a Long Island, New York firm offering Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, W3C-Compliant web design using full CSS layouts and all things web design/development. Source: Entireweb Newsletter * June 5, 2007 * Issue #341 |
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